064: disorganization & sex
from france to los angeles, casey's got psychoanalysis on his mind
Casey MQ is a musician, producer, film composer, and (maybe, sometime in the future) actor living in Los Angeles. He’s also a good friend of mine. Casey and I got to know each other better over the pandemic, as we co-worked on cafe patios and he tried to teach me how to drive. (I lasted four sessions and was incredibly anxious every time.) Our conversations then, as they are now, were high-energy, expansive conversations about everything. We love to gossip as much as we love to talk about Walter Benjamin and Marcel Proust. (The second one’s more Casey but I’m a willing and eager listener. Recently, Casey has been making his way through À la recherche du temps perdu—he’s now on book three.) I knew I had to get Casey to write a dispatch after I read his Letterboxd review for Caravaggio:
It’s that last line that really bowls me over: “who was killed, kissed, it does not matter, i was asleep!”
Casey’s sweet little treat for us is full of equally scrumptious gems. You’ll be as obsessed as I am.
x Akosua
My psychoanalyst paused our sessions for three weeks to deal with some bureaucratic medical licensing right in the middle of my five week trip in France. Just when I needed maximum transference he disappeared! How will I ever get in touch with my unconscious without him…I watch Succession weekly, maybe I will find it there? I’m not so sure.
I sit at a cafe listening to the French language and think, perhaps, if I just listen a little harder I will finally understand. I stare into my phone. Staring extremely hard until I finally castrate the phone from my body. Now that is something I feel.
I wake up in my friend’s apartment in the neighbourhood called Belleville. I stare, stare, stare, deep, deep, deep, and then, I throw it away! Get it off of me. It’s like coming up for air where I overstayed my welcome one hour too long. I rip the phone from my body. Jamieson Webster mentions something about the phone and castration so I repeat various sentiments about it to my friends all week. After speaking about her enough, a friend of mine very sweetly stopped by After 8 bookstore and picked up a copy of Disorganization & Sex. Now I have become completely immersed in trying to understand Lacan and Freud from her POV. It’s honestly helping a bit…I need to consume my dreams. She was consumed by Adorno’s dream journal, I can’t focus on him, I gotta focus on me!
I sit on a plane ride back home to Los Angeles. I’m feeling stir-in-the-stomach excited. Twelve hour flight and I contemplate that this may be the flight that I die. I’m sorry, I can’t help it—I’m in the clouds for god’s sakes. Reader, I’ll let you know now, French Bee airline’s movie selection is slim. I chose the category: cult movies. Capote, Thelma & Louise and Moonrise Kingdom were my choices. Capote, I was pleasantly surprised, I was pulled in, riveted by Philip Seymour Hoffman. It’s a twelve hour flight though—I’m in a state of oblivion, I’m not even sure I can recall the plot.
Thelma & Louise and Moonrise Kingdom are the backdrop of my phone photo cleaning. Travelling through 2017 - 2020, deleting photos. I’m not sure if I made that much of a dent. Love lives in those photos, I couldn’t rip them from my body.
Thanks for reading! You can follow Casey on Instagram, @caseymq and listen to his amazing new EP, Two Songs, everywhere you listen to music. If you’re thirsty for more guest posts from my sexy friends: Rachel Davies, Tony Zelenka, Jess Kasiama, Blake Mancini, Kyle Curry, Sonja Katanic. Submissions for the CR Taylor Swift zine are still open—get to writing, collaging, or whatever!